If you’re an avid daytime TV fan, you’ve no doubt spent more than a few minutes with Phil and Holly, or Eamonn and Ruth on This Morning. They’ve all been a fixture on the TV schedules for years – and part of that daily dose of TV magazine culture in the competitions.

On nearly every show there’s a prize draw promotion, and part of that is a big wad of cash, sometimes on its own, and sometimes along with a car or incredible holiday to win.

For several years now, you’ll have been able to visit us here at EnterCompetitionsOnline.co.uk to catch up with the latest prizes if you’ve missed them on the shows. It’s been a bit of a labour of love for us, growing to where we are today.

Hopefully, for the vast majority of people entering the This Morning competitions, it’s a bit of fun. It’s always a bit surprising when people ask what the chance of winning is, and the short answer is, we’ve got absolutely no idea. Apply a bit of logic tough, and it’s not going to take long to realise it’s a fairly long shot.

Now, let’s deviate slightly before we go any further. We’ve always advocated entering via the cheapest route. At the moment that’s by post, which makes things a bit curious for some readers, as we don’t provide the premium rate phone numbers or text entry details as a rule.

We’re not doing that as a way of passing judgement on people who choose to pay to enter, that’s up to you. Nor are we suggesting ITV shouldn’t make money – they’re a business and have the right to do so like any other company. They’re clear about the costs every time they show a phone or text number, so that’s fine by us.

The reason for our decision to list the ‘free’ entry route is because we believe people will, on the whole, not just enter one draw in isolation, it’ll probably be something fairly regular, or a least not be an isolated incident. It also means we’re helping people to save a bit of money, but it’s also important to realise it’s not completely free either. You need to pay for a stamp, and envelope or postcard and take the time to go to the post box and put it in the mail too. Time is money after all, it’s not free by any stretch of the imagination.

So, disclaimer over, let’s get back to the chances of winning.

If you enter online, that’s probably the most profitable route for ITV. Most competitions cost £2 to enter, and prizes are usually worth at least £100,000. Admittedly, some draws are sponsored by holiday companies or car dealerships (do name a couple), but it’s probably safe to assume that the ones that aren’t are coming from ITV’s coffers, and we assume they’re not running them at a loss either.

Then there’s the big competitions, and when they’re big they can be very big. The largest prize was £1,000,000. It’s not been repeated since, so the million pound give-away was probably a bit of a stretch at the time, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see a repeat coming in the future. It’s got a very good ring to it after all, and who doesn’t want to be a millionaire?

If you can give away a million quid at £2 an entry, you must be seeing more than half a million paid entries. If that was it – a single entry would therefore have a chance of winning of one in five hundred thousand. That is roughly in the ball park of being the one person picked at random in the whole of Manchester.

We’ve not taken account of costs other than the prize itself either. On the competition promotions, we often see a team of people responsible for running the prize draws too, and as any business owner knows, people aren’t cheap. It’s also reasonable to assume Paypal take a small cut for each payment they process for ITV’s entry form too.

Other small costs will be things like paying Royal Mail to handle all the postal entries that arrive into their PO Box, and even running the bonus token competitions will incur costs.

Finally, we’d bet that Andi Peters isn’t paying for his own first class plane tickets and hotels in the sun to film the promotions. All in all, those costs are going to add up to eye watering expenses.

Taking everything into account, it’s probably safe to say the chance of wining one of the biggest competitions is on the wrong side of one in a million, but so is the lottery, and that doesn’t stop people. And there’s the point. Millions of people love to have a flutter every now and again, and the odd competition entry is a good way to do that.

Let’s face it, Martin Lewis probably doesn’t see it as a great investment due to the abysmal odds of winning the competition on This Morning, and that’s because it’s not an investment. It’s a random punt and it’s completely down to luck, and someone has to win, because ITV winners are not actors. Every competition has a guaranteed winner as Andi likes to say, and we believe him – it just has a lot more entrants!